


I Didn't Know I Needed You Until I Had You

by poisns



Series: Klaus and His Best Friend [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Best Friends, Friendship, Gen, Good Brother Ben Hargreeves, Hurt/Comfort, I love this friendship, Kid Fic, No Beta, One Shot, POV Ben Hargreeves, POV Klaus Hargreeves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 13:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18852457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisns/pseuds/poisns
Summary: An intruder - who turns out to be completely harmless - scares Ben shitless.Thank God she belonged to Klaus.





	I Didn't Know I Needed You Until I Had You

**Author's Note:**

> hey again. more shelley? uh, ya. this one is ben's pov at the start then klaus' pov after the dashes. i promise i'll write more ben, i just really like the idea of klaus having a bff that isn't one of his siblings. 
> 
> no drugs in this, just cuddles and sad but happy and warm vibes.
> 
> also, this is a year after the first fic where klaus goes to that party. ben aint dead yet, but he will be two months after this i think LOLL.
> 
> please please leave a comment. i mean, you don't have to, but it would be nice.

It was half-past two in the morning, and Ben was terrified.

Not only was it dark and he couldn’t see his own hands held up in front of his face, but there was a soft, yet loud, tapping coming from his window. He wasn’t insane - Ben wasn’t the type to confront a scary noise head on - nine times out of ten, he’d hang back and get someone else to take a look at whatever it was that was causing him to shiver with pure, unfiltered fear. Being seventeen meant jack shit - he still felt like he was going to pee his pants.

However, this particular occasion seemed to be the one that fell into the one time out of ten that he would  _ have to  _ pull up his big-boy-pants and walk towards the sound with a brave face. It didn’t help that he could feel the tentacles inside of him twitching irregularly, almost pestering him to break the seal and let them out for a breather. He didn’t typically feel movement from them at night, but maybe it was because he was so used to them writhing and wriggling so violently that he didn’t feel it like he used to. 

“Yeah, yeah, calm down,” he mumbled downwards to his stomach in hopes of enforcing calm upon them; not like it’d work. They rarely listened to him. He rolled his eyes, and let out a shaking breath and sat upright in his bed. In the event that this was a knife-wielding marauder, and he was in total danger, Ben had calculated the possible outcomes in his head and came to the conclusion that he was willing to die if it meant he could protect the rest of his family that were completely unaware of what was going on. Not that he particularly  _ wanted to,  _ but the odds that it wasn't a dangerous criminal were low. The siblings whose rooms sat facing the alleyway next to the academy were no stranger to suspicious people climbing up the fire escapes to try and get inside.

“I really don’t wanna die… I really don’t…” he groaned lowly, completely going back on what he had said in his head only moments ago, pushing the comforter to the side and watching it fall down between his bed and the wall. “That’s fine, won’t need a comforter if I’m dead.” He was standing now and began to walk to his window. Was this one of those  _ rip-the-bandaid  _ situations? The faster he tore the curtain open, the faster he’d be face to face with his killer, right?

So he grabbed the opening of his curtains, closed his eyes, and pulled.

When he opened his eyes, they widened as his gaze landed upon a girl wearing ripped shorts and a tie-dye shirt that looked  _ so  _ familiar, grasping with all of her strength at the window ledge in fear of falling down. Ben opened the window hastily out of instinct, and let her grab onto his hand so he could pull her inside. 

Her feet didn’t quite land on the hardwood floor, and her knees buckled, causing her to stumble rather ungracefully. She wiped her hands against her shirt and looked at Ben apologetically. He had noticed by the reflection from the street lights outside against her eyes that she had been crying; the wet tracks on her face glistening with the help of the yellow glow filtering through. He opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it. 

“Hey, uh, I guess this is the wrong room. I’m looking for Klaus. Is he… around?”

  
  


\--

  
  


Klaus couldn’t sleep, but that wasn’t news.

Much to his own surprise, it wasn’t related to the ghosts. Instead, he was just incredibly restless. His room was outrageously hot because his window didn’t open - ever since Pogo had witnessed Klaus surviving a fifteen-foot drop from the fire escape to the concrete a few months back, it had been fixed shut from the inside out to  _ ‘prevent further accidents’.  _ It wasn’t exactly an accident; one wouldn’t typically call  _ sneaking ‘out to buy drugs’  _ accidental. He was also hungry.  _ Very  _ hungry. His stomach projected the most human-like groans in protest of being empty, but he supposed it was his own fault since he was too high at dinnertime to lift his hands in order to finish his food. Reginald just scolded him for not sleeping enough the night before and threatened him behind everyone’s backs with individual training for an entire day if he were to pull a stunt like that again. He thought he’d better not disappoint Daddy further than he already had (if it was even possible), so he made a show of entering his room at half-past seven, yawning and dragging his feet dramatically, only to prove a point. Reginald had only grumbled and rolled his eyes, muttering something like  _ ‘God knows how this boy turned out this way’ _ . Klaus had found it rather funny, but finding it oh so difficult not to retaliate with  _ ‘It sure doesn’t have a thing to do with you, Pops.’  _

It wasn’t the end of the world, really.

Klaus had been submerged in thought when there was a soft knock at his door. He got up off of his bed, creeping to the door to avoid making noise. He grasped the doorknob lightly and opened the door, wincing silently in anticipation for the horrid creak that usually followed. However, his wince dissipated when standing on the other side of the door was Ben and… Shelley?

“The fuck?” Klaus whispered, looking at Ben incredulously. His brother shrugged.

“She was at my window tapping on it like a murderer. I thought I was going to die, Klaus.”

Klaus frowned and looked at Shelley, “Ben’s an  _ Anxious Annie.  _ You can’t pull something like that on him ‘cos he might wet his panties.” Ben glared at Klaus and turned to leave.

“Night, Klaus. Or, morning. Whatever. Bye, the girl who’s  _ definitely _ wearing Klaus’ top.” His brother went back into his own dark bedroom and closed the door softly.

Klaus looked at the top in question and made a jealous face at the way it fit her. “Looks better on you than it ever did on me. Come forth, my little witch,” he waved an arm into his room, and Shelley stepped inside, arms crossed. Klaus closed his door softly, and stood in front of her, mimicking the way she was standing. “So? Is there a reason you decided you’d show up here at one in the morning?” It was meant to be a joke, but her body language and facial expression threw him off slightly. He faltered.

“It's half two, actually,” She mumbled, going over towards his bed and sitting down. She seemed more than off. Klaus’ eyebrows furrowed worriedly, and he paced over to where she was sat, almost curled in on herself. Her whole demeanour radiated discomfort, but Klaus couldn’t guess why just by staring at her sat there.

He stood in front of her and gently placed his hand behind her head, pulling it towards his stomach. He rubbed at her back with his other hand and pursed his lips. “What’s gotten you down,  _ mein mädchen?” _

She didn’t answer at first. She just sighed wetly, choking back on whatever she wanted to say. Klaus frowned, lips turning into a frown. He felt like he was some kind of empath that could feel people’s raw emotions as well as being a walking ouija board cursed by the souls taken away too soon. He supposed that anything was possible if he lived with a socially anxious kid that had tentacles living in his stomach and another one with a terrible knack for tattling who could throw an entire man across a field like a pebble. It wasn’t far fetched at all, really.

“Talk to me. Please.”

Shelley sniffed and lifted her head. Klaus’ heart ached when she looked at him with the emptiest expression he’d ever seen on a persons face before, new tear tracks having appeared since he last looked at her. “My, uh, my mom,” she whispered, trying to keep her voice down, “she died.”

“Oh, Shelley, my angel,” Klaus crooned, grasping her cheeks with his hands. The connection he felt in that moment when he looked straight into her eyes knocked the air out of him slightly; her expression was unchanging, but tears still ran down her reddened cheeks freely, trickling down her jaw and dripping onto her bare legs, “you can cry. You can cry.” She scrunched her nose and the floodgates opened. It was hard and painful to watch; she was choking on silent sobs that made her entire chest cave in with each strangled breath. She was clearly trying to stay silent, threatened by the thought of Reginald storming in and finding her, an outside, in Klaus’ room. Klaus said nothing, he just gripped onto her with all his strength as she mourned.

Klaus had met Shelley’s mother several times. She had been nothing but kind, selfless and loving towards him. Klaus had turned up at Shelley’s apartment door at 3 AM with bleeding welts littered across arms, legs and back from a mission that had involved a pellet gun wielded by a teenager no older than himself. She had whisked him inside and immediately grabbed a first aid kit. He treasured the relationship that he had formed with her based off of the few times they met, and to imagine how Shelley was feeling was something that Klaus couldn’t even begin to comprehend. 

At that point, Klaus was thinking. He thought about her mother, and where she would be. She would latch onto the person she loved the most and would follow them around wherever they went, but Klaus hadn’t seen her near, and it forced a grimace to grace his features. Maybe it was too soon? Or maybe she hadn’t managed to find her daughter yet, and she was just floating aimlessly around in hopes of spotting her along the way. He hated to make justifications for her absence, but it was the only way he could stop himself from crying also; to convince himself that Shelley’s mom would show her face somehow. As if she read his mind, she pushed against his stomach with her forehead and brought her top up to wipe the tears off of her face.

“You can see her, right?”

He could lie to her, or he could tell the truth. Lying would instil false hope. It would force Shelley to the edge and she would be waiting day in and day out for a sign from her mom. But telling the truth would break her, surely.

“I don’t want you to tell me if you can,” Klaus let out a sigh of relief that he didn’t know he had been holding, “I only want  _ you _ to know if she’s there or not,” she sniffed, “I trust you to not tell me, Klaus. My last memory of her is feeling the way she held my hand and how she told me that I was the love of her life and that I was the only person she wanted to fight for life for. And I told her that she didn’t have to because I hated seeing her struggle to do things for me.” She lazily threw her hands up and frowned. Klaus sat down on the bed and brushed her hair from her face.

“She was the luckiest lady in the world, she really was. If I have a daughter one day, I’d want her to be just like you,” He smiled weakly, “you are truly incredible, Sheldon.”

She rolled her eyes, grinning, “Stop calling me Sheldon, you bitch.”

Klaus gasped and put a hand over his mouth, “How dare you! I ought to cast you onto the streets for that. But not out my window, Daddy had it locked so I couldn’t go on any more adventures.”

“The way you fell was actually  _ very  _ funny. I nearly wet my pants from laughing.”

“Yeah, well I almost wet mine on impact. It was a big drop, dear.”

“But a funny one.”

“Yeah,” Klaus sighed, smile faltering into something softer. He looked at Shelley fondly, and she looked back at him with the same expression, confusion laced into the mix.

“What?” she laughed nervously.

Klaus shook his head. “Nothing, I’m just thinking about how much I treasure your wild and incapsulating presence in my totally  _ fucked up  _ life. I mean, we’ve known each other since that God-awful party last year at Halloween? You kissed me on the mouth, and then it took days for my lips to stop itching.” Shelley laughed. Luther had teased him for days about the whole ordeal.

“That’s… a year now. Right? Yeah, a year,” Shelley looked back at Klaus, “thank you, Klaus. I didn’t know I needed you until I had you.”

“You don’t have to thank me. I’m basically a  _ superhero,  _ being there for people is my schtick.”

Shelley scoffed. “You’re hardly a superhero, but I appreciate your effort. I love you, Klaus.”

At that moment, Klaus  _ truly  _ felt wanted. He didn’t need sexual love that would break him in the end. He didn’t need a relationship that would drive him insane. He just needed his Shelley. His best friend. His source of happiness and life and light that never faltered, that constantly supplied it to him without batting an eye.

“I love you more, my little witch.”

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you lovely people thought. i'll be finished with college in about three weeks, so i'll most probably be writing a heck of a lot more to pass the time.


End file.
